A Tennessee teen in the mid-1990s, Eugene Weisman enjoys pretending to defend a so-called "alien"-until the game turns deadly and his life depends on what others believe. Hand-picked to helm Program Invigil, Colonel Chester McGovern takes responsibility for detection, isolation, and eradication-then unleashes enormous inter-military power cloaked in black-helicopter secrecy. Tiring of the clandestine wet-work biz, soldier of fortune Flynn Durbett settles down to run a weapons-smuggling ring for governments and underground patriots-but then old obligations renew, and his own opinions matter less than standing up for others'. As Eugene attracts followers who declare him the true savior, McGovern lays siege to American citizens while searching for the missing black box in his obsessive mission to preserve life as we know it. Do we really need to be protected? And who will deliver us?-the military, or a loosely organized rag-tag militia? Is it all fantasy, or a threat greater than we ever imagined? Everybody has the right to believe, but only one can be the Invigilator.